The Brazilian government plans to exempt fuel ethanol of certain taxes that if approved by regulators could be equivalent to 10 per cent of the pump price, the Valor Economico newspaper reported on Monday.
The government could lift the so-called PIS/Cofins taxes applied to the biofuel as soon as April, the newspaper said without saying how it acquired the information.
Valor Economico reported that the plan merely needs the signature of Energy Minister Edison Lobao, who in February said the government was considering the tax break to revive investments in the cane ethanol industry.
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Showing posts with label Ethanol Brazil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethanol Brazil. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
GraalBio Gets $294 Million from BNDES
GraalBio cellulose ethanol plant, to be based in Brazil, has reportedly received investment capital from BNDES, the state development bank of Brazil, garnering $294 million. The plant is scheduled to open in the early part of 2014.
The investment arm of the bank, BNDESPar, will provide the financing for the project. BNDES will receive
15 percent of the company and one seat on the board of directors of the company.
Ethanol production on an annual basis will be able to reach 22 million gallons, and would be the first second generation ethanol facility located in the southern hemisphere. Second generation ethanol refers to the use of plant material not used for food in producing fuel, otherwise known as cellulose ethanol.
Many believe, as far as ethanol goes, that cellulose will be more widely adopted as a biofuel because it doesn't interfere with the food supply.
Early in 2012 Novozymes said it'll be providing enzymes to GraalBio.
The investment arm of the bank, BNDESPar, will provide the financing for the project. BNDES will receive
15 percent of the company and one seat on the board of directors of the company.
Ethanol production on an annual basis will be able to reach 22 million gallons, and would be the first second generation ethanol facility located in the southern hemisphere. Second generation ethanol refers to the use of plant material not used for food in producing fuel, otherwise known as cellulose ethanol.
Many believe, as far as ethanol goes, that cellulose will be more widely adopted as a biofuel because it doesn't interfere with the food supply.
Early in 2012 Novozymes said it'll be providing enzymes to GraalBio.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Grupo Bertin Acquires Infinity Bio-Energy
Ethanol Company Infinity Bio-Energy Acquired
Grupo Bertin has acquired a 71 percent stake in Infinity Bio-Energy LTD., a sugar and ethanol producer based in Brazil. The amount of the deal wasn't disclosed.
One particular term of the deal that was revealed is Infinity will issue new shares to Bertin as a part of the acquisition.
At this time Infinity owns five mills in Brazil, although it has struggled since its inception like many ethanol companies.
Grupo Bertin has no experience in the ethanol sector, as it is a consumer products and construction company, making one wonder why they are doing it. The price had to have been extremely low for them to enter into the risky venture with Infinity.
Grupo Bertin has acquired a 71 percent stake in Infinity Bio-Energy LTD., a sugar and ethanol producer based in Brazil. The amount of the deal wasn't disclosed.
One particular term of the deal that was revealed is Infinity will issue new shares to Bertin as a part of the acquisition.
At this time Infinity owns five mills in Brazil, although it has struggled since its inception like many ethanol companies.
Grupo Bertin has no experience in the ethanol sector, as it is a consumer products and construction company, making one wonder why they are doing it. The price had to have been extremely low for them to enter into the risky venture with Infinity.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Ethanol: How to Make Ethanol
While ethanol is a disaster, it's interesting to see the many people that look at it as a viable alternative energy and fuel, and search into how they can make ethanol on their own.
Regular ethanol has been extremely destructive to numerous small engine power equipment, and during the winter time we notice many of the snowmobiles, chainsaws and generators at the small engine repair shops as the alleged biofuel continues to destroy the parts and engines of the products, even though some proponents continue to pretend it's completely safe to use, while the equipment of ethanol users is destroyed, and in some cases becomes dangerous to use because of the potential consequences of getting stranded; as in the case of snowmobiles or motor boats.
Some even continue to claim the very expensive fuel and poor mileage (as far as it relates to vehicles) is inexpensive. But some studies have shown the price of gasoline would have to reach about $2.33 a gallon to be the equivalent of the high cost of ethanol.
So it can be understood why people that like to experiment and try things out would want to make their own ethanol for the purpose of accomplishing the task, it's hard to know why other than that someone would want to put it in any type of equipment they use.
Making ethanol is of course nothing new, as people have known how to make ethanol for a long time, using fermentation and the distillation of sugar and starch crops. Some of the obvious crops still used today to make ethanol are corn, cornstalks and sugar cane (in Brazil). Other crops used are potatoes, wheat and peelings from fruit and vegetables. Grass and wood chips or sawdust can be used as well, among many others.
It takes a lot of this stuff to even make one gallon of ethanol, as it takes about 10gallons of crops or other material to make a gallon of the fuel additive. So picture wanting about 10 gallons of the stuff. You'd have to have access to about 100 gallons of raw materials in order to make that much. It would take a ton of work just to gather that much together, even if someone was willing to give it to you to work with.
So what's the process on How to Make Ethanol?
To turn raw materials into ethanol, it requires five steps:
Conversion
Fermentation
Distillation
Filtration
Dehydration
Whatever material you decide to use, it has to be converted by the sugars being broken down in the process. That's either done manually or by adding an enzyme.
In the fermentation part of the process, you're at the creation of alcohol stage, and so add yeast in a similar way you would if you were making wine.
The next stage in How to Make Ethanol is to use a still for the purpose of separation of the alcohol from the rest of the liquid. This is called Distillation.
For the next two steps you filtrate the liquid in order to remove the impurities in the liquid as well as the excess water remaining.
Materials needed to make ethanol:
A lidded plastic bucket or barrel
Yeast
Fruit
Hydrometer
Because the liquid will start to ferment once the fruit or raw material is broken down, you should only fill it to about one-third full, or you'll end up with a messy overflow of the ethanol.
When using yeast, don't think in terms of the type you'd use for making bread. Rather, to make ethanol, us the type you would acquire from a store with supplies to make wine. That type of yeast is tolerant to ethanol.
Once you add the yeast to the mixture, use the hydrometer to measure the sugar content. Once you have that figure, cover up the barrel.
Simply let it sit for several days while checking the sugar content once a day. What you're looking for is the sugar content in the mixture to gradually decrease until there's zero sugar left in the ethanol. That will usually take about 10 days.
When that part of the process is completed, the mixture should be immediately distilled, or you risk damaging whatever equipment you might put the fuel into.
This could be an enjoyable experiment to have fun with, but doing this allows you to see the number of things involved with making ethanol, the high amount of inputs, and how a lot can go wrong with it while it's being made, which could damage your equipment.
In the end, it can be fun learning how to make ethanol, but I sure wouldn't really want to use it other than in something old to learn the damage it can cause.
Regular ethanol has been extremely destructive to numerous small engine power equipment, and during the winter time we notice many of the snowmobiles, chainsaws and generators at the small engine repair shops as the alleged biofuel continues to destroy the parts and engines of the products, even though some proponents continue to pretend it's completely safe to use, while the equipment of ethanol users is destroyed, and in some cases becomes dangerous to use because of the potential consequences of getting stranded; as in the case of snowmobiles or motor boats.
Some even continue to claim the very expensive fuel and poor mileage (as far as it relates to vehicles) is inexpensive. But some studies have shown the price of gasoline would have to reach about $2.33 a gallon to be the equivalent of the high cost of ethanol.
So it can be understood why people that like to experiment and try things out would want to make their own ethanol for the purpose of accomplishing the task, it's hard to know why other than that someone would want to put it in any type of equipment they use.
Making ethanol is of course nothing new, as people have known how to make ethanol for a long time, using fermentation and the distillation of sugar and starch crops. Some of the obvious crops still used today to make ethanol are corn, cornstalks and sugar cane (in Brazil). Other crops used are potatoes, wheat and peelings from fruit and vegetables. Grass and wood chips or sawdust can be used as well, among many others.
It takes a lot of this stuff to even make one gallon of ethanol, as it takes about 10gallons of crops or other material to make a gallon of the fuel additive. So picture wanting about 10 gallons of the stuff. You'd have to have access to about 100 gallons of raw materials in order to make that much. It would take a ton of work just to gather that much together, even if someone was willing to give it to you to work with.
So what's the process on How to Make Ethanol?
To turn raw materials into ethanol, it requires five steps:
Conversion
Fermentation
Distillation
Filtration
Dehydration
Whatever material you decide to use, it has to be converted by the sugars being broken down in the process. That's either done manually or by adding an enzyme.
In the fermentation part of the process, you're at the creation of alcohol stage, and so add yeast in a similar way you would if you were making wine.
The next stage in How to Make Ethanol is to use a still for the purpose of separation of the alcohol from the rest of the liquid. This is called Distillation.
For the next two steps you filtrate the liquid in order to remove the impurities in the liquid as well as the excess water remaining.
Materials needed to make ethanol:
A lidded plastic bucket or barrel
Yeast
Fruit
Hydrometer
Because the liquid will start to ferment once the fruit or raw material is broken down, you should only fill it to about one-third full, or you'll end up with a messy overflow of the ethanol.
When using yeast, don't think in terms of the type you'd use for making bread. Rather, to make ethanol, us the type you would acquire from a store with supplies to make wine. That type of yeast is tolerant to ethanol.
Once you add the yeast to the mixture, use the hydrometer to measure the sugar content. Once you have that figure, cover up the barrel.
Simply let it sit for several days while checking the sugar content once a day. What you're looking for is the sugar content in the mixture to gradually decrease until there's zero sugar left in the ethanol. That will usually take about 10 days.
When that part of the process is completed, the mixture should be immediately distilled, or you risk damaging whatever equipment you might put the fuel into.
This could be an enjoyable experiment to have fun with, but doing this allows you to see the number of things involved with making ethanol, the high amount of inputs, and how a lot can go wrong with it while it's being made, which could damage your equipment.
In the end, it can be fun learning how to make ethanol, but I sure wouldn't really want to use it other than in something old to learn the damage it can cause.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ethanol is Bad Investment: Just Ask Brazil
We always seem to hear about the potential and value of ethanol at a viable source of fuel for our vehicles. But let's look at Brazil, which is looked to as an example of ethanol success.
Some excerpts from a recent article on the cost of ethanol versus gasoline:
"Here’s an alternative fuels word problem that might baffle even the best U.S. math students:
"Jose drives his black flex-fuel Toyota Corolla into a Esso station on Rua Henrique Schaumann, a busy thoroughfare in Sao Paulo. He sees that gas costs 2.60 Brazilian reais per liter and ethanol costs 1.55 reais per liter. If Jose wants to get the most mileage for his money, which fuel should he choose?
"But for Brazilians, especially the millions who drive flex-fuel cars that run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol, that question is a breeze.
“'Here’s the rule of thumb,' said Jose himself, full name Jose De Luca, a 30-year-old industrial engineer. 'When the price is 70 percent or less the price of gas, it’s worth using ethanol.'
"He’s got the right idea, says Adriano Pires, an economist and director of the energy consulting firm Centro Brasileiro de Infra Estrutura. According to Pires, the 70 percent figure is generally accepted as correct, although it can vary slightly depending on a car's make and model."
All the talk of options and choices is fine, but as you can see from a country that is the leader in doing it, gasoline is still by far the most productive and effective fuel available.
With estimates of oil shale in the U.S. being 5 times the amount of known reserves in Saudi Arabia, we aren't anywhere near the myth of "peak oil" thrown around by those who have a stake in providing of alternatives or the price of oil going up.
Some excerpts from a recent article on the cost of ethanol versus gasoline:
"Here’s an alternative fuels word problem that might baffle even the best U.S. math students:
"Jose drives his black flex-fuel Toyota Corolla into a Esso station on Rua Henrique Schaumann, a busy thoroughfare in Sao Paulo. He sees that gas costs 2.60 Brazilian reais per liter and ethanol costs 1.55 reais per liter. If Jose wants to get the most mileage for his money, which fuel should he choose?
"But for Brazilians, especially the millions who drive flex-fuel cars that run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol, that question is a breeze.
“'Here’s the rule of thumb,' said Jose himself, full name Jose De Luca, a 30-year-old industrial engineer. 'When the price is 70 percent or less the price of gas, it’s worth using ethanol.'
"He’s got the right idea, says Adriano Pires, an economist and director of the energy consulting firm Centro Brasileiro de Infra Estrutura. According to Pires, the 70 percent figure is generally accepted as correct, although it can vary slightly depending on a car's make and model."
All the talk of options and choices is fine, but as you can see from a country that is the leader in doing it, gasoline is still by far the most productive and effective fuel available.
With estimates of oil shale in the U.S. being 5 times the amount of known reserves in Saudi Arabia, we aren't anywhere near the myth of "peak oil" thrown around by those who have a stake in providing of alternatives or the price of oil going up.
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